RESUMEN
BACKGROUND: There has been a controversy about the prognostic significance of positive peritoneal cytology in endometrial carcinoma. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Peritoneal cytology was obtained at the time of surgery, including systematic retroperitoneal lymph node dissection, in 114 patients. RESULTS: The incidence of positive peritoneal cytology was 35.1%. The 5-year survival rates of the stage IIIA and IIIC (FIGO, 1988) cases were 82.8% and 58.3%, respectively. In pathological stage I (the disease was histologically confined to the uterine corpus), there was no significant difference in 5-year survival rates between patients with and without positive peritoneal cytology. Though the patients in stage IIIA who had only positive peritoneal cytology were given no postoperative therapy unless they had extrauterine disease, no patients developed recurrence. In stages IIIC and IV, the prognosis was significantly poorer for patients with positive peritoneal cytology than for those with negative cytology. CONCLUSION: Positive peritoneal cytology is not an adverse prognostic factor endometrial carcinoma if disease is limited to the uterus.